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Fools
I’ve just been reading Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters and I can’t help but wonder whether the Fool, AKA Verence II, is based on Vila. OK, I know that Pratchett despised B7 but maybe he once saw The Keeper and decided to use Vila’s Fool as a character. After all:
- The Fool is a clever man pretending not to be
- He has “a face like a spaniel that’s just been kicked”.
- He’s of a nervous disposition
- When Magrat really looked at him, she realised that the Fool was not a little man. He was at least of average height but he made himself small, by hunching his shoulders, bandying his legs, and walking in a half-crouch…
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I have always assumed that Rincewind was directly inspired by Vila - TP must have seen at least a couple of episodes of B7
in order to know that he hated it, and Vila seems such an obvious literary ancestor for Rincewind. Vila without the virtues, if you like, since Rincewind isn't any good at his chosen profession. I can't think of any other characters who admit to unabashed cowardice - Flashman does, but only in his memoirs, so everyone around him thinks he's a hero.
Verence, on the other hand, isn't actually a coward, he's just not a conventional hero. And he cares about people, and takes responsibility for them, much more than canon!Vila.
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Rincewind has some incredibly Vila-esque lines; I keep reading them out to Greg. :-) I'd say he used aspects of Vila for both of them except for his expressed dislike of B7. Perhaps you could even find out; don't you have some contact with TP?
And I'm not too sure that Verence cared too much about people till he gave up his loyalty--I can't see Vila advising urban clearance--and Vila was also surprisingly loyal though I think he'd like being a conjurer and comedian. Plus, Vila cares more than he lets on if you look at his actions rather than his words, though Boucher does almost always write him as selfish, stupid, and useless.
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I used to have fannish contact - he's a great guy for socialising with his fan base - but I haven't been involved with Discworld fandom for years now (I'm a fan of TP's Middle period, up to and including Feet of Clay. Nothing thereafter has caught my imagination in quite the same way).
And I'm not too sure that Verence cared too much about people till he gave up his loyalty
But holding loyalty as a virtue means caring more about someone else than yourself, I think. Whereas Vila holds no truck with duties and responsibilities (unless they're someone else's, of course).
Vila cares more than he lets on if you look at his actions rather than his words
Oh, absolutely. Same with Avon. But what makes them both interesting, in their very different ways, is that they don't pay lip-service to conventional moral standards, as espoused by eg Blake and Jenna and Gan and Tarrant. They expose other people's hypocrisy by being devastatingly honest about not giving a toss about anyone who isn't them; the fact that they both don't always manage to live down to their professed standards makes them sympathetic, but even so, most of the time their self-assessment is entirely accurate - it's a very small group of people indeed that either of them cares about, and anyone else in the galaxy had better watch out.
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So there you are: I'm worse than Vila. I require something back.
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Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses :-) He's better at picking locks that you, too, but not at seeing the best in people and giving them encouragement.
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That's pretty much part of a mediaeval Fool's job description though, isn't it? Vila himself is in a long tradition of jesters who have to placate more powerful people but who often know more than they do. For instance, he has some likenesses to Kipling's Rahere (http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/RewardsFaries/treejustice.html) with his "sad priest's face" "the hollow of his dark cheek flushed with wine", though Rahere is unusual in being very bold in his speech, and doesn't hide his height. He is noted for compassion though; in the Kipling story he befriends a wandering old man, and his historical original (Henry I's fool) is said to have founded Bart's Hospital after seeing a family of lepers in the street.
I didn't know Pterry didn't like B7 -where did he say so?
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I know that medieval Fools were accepted as clever and allowed to advise the king with near impunity. I'm not sure Vila's advice was ever taken.
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Yes, they were very unwise like that! Except isn't it he who figures out in Trial that Blake will have left a message and how to access it?
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It may be that Verence was partly inspired by Claudius in "I, Claudius". I've never read it, though I saw the BBC adaptation starring Derek Jacobi some thirty years ago. ISTR that Claudius used the disguise of a stuttering fool as a survival strategy in the murderous Roman court.
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I didn't know Terry doesn't like B7. Bleh. I hate it when my fandoms are at odds.
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Shakespeare's Fool in 12th Night was "Wise enough to play the Fool and to do that well requires some kind of wit."
Not that I'm saying it was Shakespeare that inspired both!
Avon as Vimes, interesting idea. (oh no now have mental image of DiscWorld/Blake's 7 crossover. Servalan meeting Vetinari!)
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